Software

Pydis provides a transparent access mechanism for Redis from Python. It exposes Redis primitives (lists, hashes) by overriding the built in native access mechanism for the equivalent Python type. It uses the redis-py library to facilitate the data exchange and passes through any connection options redis-py is capable of handling.

Conductor: A Controller Development Framework for High Degree of Freedom Systems

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

September 25, 2011

This paper details a new robotics programming framework called Conductor. The framework is unique in that it represents the hardware-software interface, and a user’s interaction with that interface, in terms of state variables. Within Conductor hardware is represented to the user by its states of interest, with all other interface concerns abstracted to the greatest extent possible. This representation is enabled by a five-layered component structure which this paper describes. The structure of the program allows a designer to take advantage of bandwidth-saving optimizations in high degree of freedom cases and significantly improve performance over that of current tools.

A Common Interface for Humanoid Simulation and Hardware

Robert Ellenberg & Robert Sherbert

IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots

December 2010

Humanoid robotics development often depends on simulation and prototypes for new walking algorithms. The advantages of simulation such as low cost and risk make repeated experiments and development more straightforward. However, real world implementation can require extensive porting to move from a simulation environment to a hardware platform. This tedious task can be a huge time sink that drastically slows development cycles. This paper describes a way to eliminate this bottleneck. By developing standardized protocols for motors and sensors, a software controller can communicate with both platforms using the same interface.